Dhaka, 19th July 2011. Today in a press conference Campaign for Sustainable Livelihood (CSRL) and Equity and Justice Working Group Bangladesh (EquityBD) the two network of right based civil society organizations in a press conference held in Dhaka Reporters Unity demanded full transparency of climate resilience fund, they have also demanded a single autonomous body to manage all donors and government fund on climate adaptation. The press conference was moderated by Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, Chief Moderator EquityBD, written statement read out by Mustafa Kamal Akanda, Coordinator EquityBD, Ziaul Haque Mukta Member Secretary CSRL has given detail elaboration of the position paper, among others Jibanondo Jayanta of SAF and Mohon Kumar Das of Leaders Bangladesh spoke on the occasion.
The climate resilience fund in fact BCCRF (Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund) is a multi donor’s trust fund, at present which has contribution of $ 128 million so far from UK, EU, Denmark and Sweden. According to the agreement with government of Bangladesh, although the fund is owned by Government of Bangladesh but for the time being it will be managed by World Bank, the bank will charge 1 % for this. Ten percent of the fund will be allocated for non government organization, which will be managed by Polli Karma Sahayak Foundation (PKSF). In last 19th May there was first meeting of BCCRF and first trench allocation has been announced, CSRL and EquityBD was making concern on that.
In the written statement CSRL and EquityBD has given give four specific demand i.e., (1) full transparency of project selection and approval process, they demanded website from three implementation agencies; (2) inclusion of four conditions as a built-in project implementation i.e., (a) corruption risk assessment, (b) information disclosure policy, (c) complain response mechanism, and (d) participation index; (3) full disclosure on detail modalities of building capacities of government with time line toward full ownership of the government, (4) full autonomy for PKSF in project implementation, with full disclosure on freeing from conflict of interest, finally (5) all climate fund should be brought under a single autonomous board with democratic ownership. The group criticize the present pattern of membership of government board which in fact mostly with government policy makers, they demanded a “democratic ownership” in this regard, i.e., the board should be with the participation of policy makers from both government, opposition, civil society, media, local government and climate victim representation.
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